Keith Farquhar profile photo

Job title:

Lecturer in Fine Art

Office:

E.20, Main Building

Office hours:

Mon, 9am - 5pm; Wed, 9am - 1pm; Thu, 9am - 5pm

Biography

Born in Edinburgh and educated at Edinburgh College of Art and Goldsmiths College, University of London, Keith Farquhar is an artist and Educator based in Edinburgh.

Farquhar’s work has been exhibited internationally in galleries and museums that include: Cabinet, London; High Art, Paris; Office Baroque, Antwerp; David Zwirner, New York; and Galerie Neu, Berlin.

Institutional presentations include Kunsthaus Melly (formerly With de Witte) Rotterdam; Frankfurter Kunstverein; Kunstverein Braunschweig; INIT Kunst-Halle, Berlin; ICA London and CAPC, Bordeaux.

Research interests

  • Sculpture and installation art
  • Readymade object
  • Appropriation
  • Banal/everyday
  • Misuse of technology

Teaching

Recently I’ve taught final year undergraduate, both practice and research. My varied knowledge and flexibility allows me to teach across Intermedia, Sculpture and Painting. I am currently Course Organiser for Artistic Research 4.

Research

My work engages with everyday objects, materials, and technological processes. It aims to advance the proposition of the readymade and to distil and reimagine the artistic gesture in ways that are novel, speculative, and open-ended. The often-overlooked cultural signifiers that shape my work are the same components that form the background ambience of contemporary life, each providing clues to activities personally undertaken or observed first-hand. I’m interested in challenging the hierarchies that define symbolic and material resources available as potential art material, accepting the banal and/or the reviled, to disrupt expectations of what constitutes artistic value.

My work has been the subject of international exhibitions, most recently at Neue Essener Kunstverein, Essen; High Art, Paris and Office Baroque, Antwerp. Institutional presentations include Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam (formerly Witte de With); Kunsthalle Fribourg and CAPC Musée d'Art Contemporain de Bordeaux.

I am currently engaged in a new body of work that will  be the subject of a solo exhibition at Sadie Coles HQ shop space, curated by Roland Ross.

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